Reckon Desktop

Reckon Desktop

What Versions of Reckon do you convert?

Alert
The Reckon conversion service is for Australia only.
Please see here for what we can convert. 

What is Converted?

  1. Contacts
  2. Chart of Accounts
  3. Inventory Items
  4. Jobs / Categories
  5. Open invoices & bills
  6. Closed Invoices & Bills for the Transactional Period Converted

What isn't Converted?

  1. Multi-currency. AUD must be the only currency.
  2. Inventory Quantities - this can be setup post conversion for tracking, see here 
  3. Pay runs - Opening balances are added. - How Payroll Converts
  4. Tracked Inventory needs to be setup post conversion - More information
  5. Xero does not allow general journals and payments unallocated to invoices and bills to customers and suppliers. Therefore we assign these to a non system Accounts Receivable and Payable account.

Watchouts in Reckon for Conversions

  1. Manual journals to control accounts - More information on how we handle this
  2. Multiple Accounts Receivable / Accounts Payable accounts - As Xero only allows one we need to merge them.
  3. Invoices or bills where the Chart of Accounts used is a Bank - More information
  4. Transactions with greater than 1000 lines - more information
  5. Turn on Chart of Accounts Numbering or we will add numbering during the conversion - more information 
  6. In some instances in Reckon a transaction may be linked to a job report however when looking at the transaction in Reckon there is no job listed. In these instances you may experience a variance in the Job profit report.

Getting Ready to Convert

Preparing My Reckon for Conversion

See here for our Pre-Conversion Checklist.

Reckon Desktop

How to Create a Back-Up

To save the backup of your Reckon desktop file, please follow the steps.
1. Click on the File menu > Save Copy or Backup


2. Select Backup Copy and click Next

3. Select Local Backup and click Next

4. Browse the location that you wish to save the file to eg. your Desktop


How to Clean Up my Reckon File

You only need to do this step if your file is large in size and you would like to reduce it prior to conversion
Only ever make this change on a backup copy of the file, as it removes old data
There are three steps to prepare your Reckon file:
  1. Remove the password
    1. From the toolbar, select Company> Change Your Password
    2. Check that the user is an admin and the new password is blank. If you have a password, it will ask you for it. 
  2. Set the closing date: The closing date is technically the Start date from which you want transactions converted, not the date of the last transaction in the file. To convert transactions from 1 July 20XX, set the closing date to 30/6 of the same calendar year.  EG - To convert transactional history from Reckon to Xero from 1 July 2023, set the closing date at 30/6/2023. 
    1. From the toolbar, select "Company"
    2. Use the drop-down to select "Set Closing Date"
    3. Click on Set Date/Password. Select the closing date of your choice, i.e., 30/06/XX. Remember, this will 'close' transactions prior to this date.
  3. Clean up the file:
    1. From the toolbar, select File
    2. From the drop-down, select Utilities
    3. From the expanded options, select 'Clean Up Company Data'
    4. Click Yes at the 'Budget data may be removed during cleanup. Do you want to continue anyway?'
    5. Select 'remove transactions as of a specific date', which is the same as the closing date (for example, 30/06/20XX). Please note this will remove transactions prior to this period, which is why we recommend doing this process on a backup copy.
    6. Select Next
    7. Tick all boxes, then click next. 
    8. Tick all boxes then click next. 
    9. Click 'Begin Cleanup'.

Errors - How to Fix Various

Common Errors and How to Handle Them

  1. Clean-up date set too early. See Example 1
  2. Error Templates  - See Example 2
  3. Changing Admin Password. - See Example 3
  4. The accountant’s Copy may need to be cancelled for purging. - See Example 4
  1. Clean-Up Date
    Set the date for clean up to be the end of the financial year, when you do not need data, to retain only the relevant data. Open invoices etc will still come through. 
    Clean-up date may be set before 30/06/2014. Edit > Preferences > Accounting > Company > Set closing Date >     Ok
  2. Errors in Templates
    In the rebuild, you may get errors in the Templates file. You need to find those errors and then delete the templates.
    Might need to do a rebuild of the file, which recreates indices and relationships. This is an example of a failure - duplicate elements. 
       
    The log file showed there were 2 invoices called "custom invoices"

    Following this up discovered that there were 2 templates called “custom Invoice” (Will need to track these errors to see what the common ones are).

    Deleting 1 solves this problem
  3. Change Password to Blank
    Company, Change Your Password. Please supply the file with a blank password.
  4. Change from Accountants Copy to Business
    Sometimes the file will have had the accountant’s Copy set. You need to go and cancel that process to enable cleanup.
    File > Accountant's Copy > Client > Cancel

    Requires Confirmation

**Please note, we can not guarantee that these steps will work for your file.**

Reckon Accountants Version - How to Downgrade a File

If you have a Reckon Accountant file, we need the file to be saved from a business version of Reckon (Pro / Premier / Enterprise). To do this, please follow these steps:

  1. Open the Reckon File in the Accountant version.
  2. From the file menu, choose toggle to another edition (e.g. Premier General Business).
  3. Save a backup copy of the file.
  4. Whilst still toggled, restore the back-up copy, this is now ready to upload to us.

Post Conversion Recommended Next Steps

Once your data is converted to a Xero Organisation we recommend:
  1. Reviewing you customise Action Checklist - this will be attached to the email advising completion, or you can return to your status page to download a copy.
  2. Comparing your data for peace of mind - more information
  3. Do you have an Accounts Receivable or Payable Originals Account? - get this tidied up - more information
  4. Updating my Chart of Accounts in Xero - more information
  5. Setting up your Bank Feeds - more information
  6. More helpful information on Using Xero

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